How is that possible? The "smart dust particles" do not have enough power to communicate with far away devices, and a satellite wouldn't be able to distinguish from two "smart dust particles" close to each other.

The smart dust functions the same way the chip in US currency does; the more of them you have together, the stronger the signal

One of the biggest drug busts made in Florida was due to the perps having $250,000.00 in hundred dollar bills; that many chips together gave a strong enough signal for it to be tracked... I will see if I can find the article concerning that event...

Logged

Look closely: See clearly: Think deeply; and Choose wisely...Trolls are crunchy and good with ketchup... Seekers Domain

Walmart Just Came Up With an Idea That Will Make Customers Really Miserable Inc. Inc.Chris Matyszczyk14 hrs ago

Watch out. There might be a camera in the shopping cart.

Should some ideas be left on the shelf? Try telling that to those who think they know the future.

Some ideas smack of genius.

Others, you just want to smack.

You must decide which is more accurate when I tell you about an idea that has just emerged from the bowels of Walmart's cranium. (Can a cranium have a bowel? -Ed.)

The famed Arkansas-based retailer has, according to the Wall Street Journal, applied for a patent that will burrow deep into customers' emotions.

This fine facial-recognition technology will have one aim -- to work out whether customers are happy. Or not.

The Journal declares that if the Walmart's razorback eye detects an unhappy customer, it will "adjust staffing accordingly."

Because, of course, the one sure way to make someone happy is to for them enjoy adjusted staffing at Walmart.

I'm reminded of sitting next to a couple in a restaurant. They hadn't spoken in a while.

Suddenly, the woman said to the man: "It's not the beef bourguignon, Dennis. It's the last 26 years."

The churlish, you see, would suggest that at least some customers are unhappy at Walmart simply because, well, they're having to shop at Walmart.

I wouldn't sink to such besmirchment. Instead, I'd suggest that, even in America, not everyone's unhappiness can be solved by consumerism.

How will this technology decide whether a customer is unhappy because they can't find the right, say, handgun rather than because they're in a terrible relationship with a lover who is more inconsiderate than a celebrity chef post-cocaine?

I envision embarrassing moments when Walmart staff at the checkout try to anticipate a customer's feelings.

They'll say, with a concerned expression: "I'm sorry you didn't like any of the water crackers on offer," only to receive the reply: "Water crackers? I'm about to have hemorrhoid surgery."

Technology, though it protests the opposite, cannot solve all human problems. Humans aren't all that good at recognizing the emotions of other humans, but human-made technology is?

Is it beyond the experience of Walmart's executives to imagine that people are miserable one day and less miserable the next?

Oh, but perhaps they're so frightened of Amazon and other competition that the only emotion that courses through them is neurosis.

Indeed, the patent filing offers that the technology will track how much customers are spending over time. "Significant drops or complete absence of customers spending (..) may be identified," it says.

Oh, yes. They must make customers happy all the time or that customer will leave them.

Dear Walmart, please let me offer some relationship advice. Sometimes, you just have to have faith in yourself. Or, as 1,423,760 self-help book authors have already put it: "You have to love yourself."

Sept 7 (Reuters) - Equifax Inc, a provider of consumer credit scores, said on Thursday a hack exposed the personal details of potentially 143 million U.S. consumers between mid-May and July.

The company's shares were down 5.4 percent in after-market trading

The company said criminals had accessed details including names, social security numbers, and, in some cases, driver's license numbers.

In addition, credit card numbers of around 209,000 U.S. consumers and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information of around 182,000 U.S. consumers were accessed, the company said.

Equifax also said personal information of certain UK and Canadian residents were also hacked.

The Atlanta-based company it would work with UK and Canadian regulators to determine the next steps.

Equifax, which discovered the unauthorized access on July 29, said it had hired a cybersecurity firm to investigate the breach.

The company said there was no evidence of a breach into its core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases.

The breach could be one of the biggest in the United States.

Last December, Yahoo Inc said more than 1 billion user accounts was compromised in August 2013, while in 2014 e-commerce company EBay Inc had urged 145 million users to change their passwords following a cyber attack.

(Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

To determine if your personal information may have been impacted by this incident, please follow the below steps:

Click on the below link, “Check Potential Impact,” and provide your last name and the last six digits of your Social Security number.Based on that information, you will receive a message indicating whether your personal information may have been impacted by this incident.Regardless of whether your information may have been impacted, we will provide you the option to enroll in TrustedID Premier. You will receive an enrollment date. You should return to this site and follow the “How do I enroll?” instructions below on or after that date to continue the enrollment and activation process. The enrollment period ends on Tuesday, November 21, 2017.CHECK POTENTIAL IMPACT

In a statement, the company said the executives "had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time they sold their shares."

5:05 p.m.

Three Equifax executives sold a combined $1.8 million in stock just days after the company discovered a major breach of its data system, but well before it disclosed the hack publicly.

The cyberattack between mid-May and July was disclosed by Equifax on Thursday. The attack exposed the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of about 143 million Americans.

The stock sales were executed on Aug. 1 and Aug. 2 by Chief Financial Officer John Gamble and two other executives, Rodolfo Ploder and Joseph Loughran. Equifax said it discovered the hack on July 29. Bloomberg News first reported the divestitures.

The sales effectively insulated the executives from a downturn in Equifax's stock Thursday. The stock dropped 13 percent in extended trading after the announcement of the breach.

While some people might find scumbag corporate behaviour infuriating, I truthfully get more angry with people who keep allowing it to be done to them, while insisting that they "have no choice." Yes, you do.

I don't have a mobile phone. I don't have a car. I don't use iTunes. I never set foot in McDonald's or Starbuck's or KFC. I read Netflix' End User Agreement, saw where they said, "We own everything, and you own nothing," and decided that I wasn't going to do business with them. I've been to the cinema once since 2012. I have a fragging conscience, and I am going to adhere to it come Hell or high water; regardless of how limited or barren my life might become as a result.

It's called personal responsibility; and if only enough other people would engage in it, we could boycott all of these corporations, and let Nature take its' course. Then we'd get companies who knew their place, because they would be aware of what had happened to those which had engaged in amoral behaviour, and they'd realise that they would need to lift their game if they wanted to continue to exist.

Capitalism was initially meant to be a sink-or-swim philosophy; the entire point was that if corporations were doing the wrong thing, the market was supposed to punish them for it. The only reason why that doesn't happen, is because the majority are willing to take their crap. We keep rewarding coercive psychopathy, so they keep looking for more and more ways to engage in it.

There is a single idea to which Google, Apple and the rest will respond with censorship, threats, and every other dirty trick at their disposal, because they know that it is the one and only weapon we have against them.

Boycott.

The author of that video mentions an extremely appropriate quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger, when it comes to corporations.

In a statement, the company said the executives "had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time they sold their shares."

5:05 p.m.

Three Equifax executives sold a combined $1.8 million in stock just days after the company discovered a major breach of its data system, but well before it disclosed the hack publicly.

The cyberattack between mid-May and July was disclosed by Equifax on Thursday. The attack exposed the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of about 143 million Americans.

The stock sales were executed on Aug. 1 and Aug. 2 by Chief Financial Officer John Gamble and two other executives, Rodolfo Ploder and Joseph Loughran. Equifax said it discovered the hack on July 29. Bloomberg News first reported the divestitures.

The sales effectively insulated the executives from a downturn in Equifax's stock Thursday. The stock dropped 13 percent in extended trading after the announcement of the breach.———

I am sorry to say, but I have to agree with Agent Smith from the Matrix, we are a plague on the planet, as a species - we suck big time.

Greed, psychopathy, sadistic control.. and it keeps happening.

We seem to be racing extinction, but we are destroying the planet and everything on it - I have stopped researching what we have killed off this last 50 years, it is too depressing.

I know there are good people, but they don't have a say or influence on the bad.. if this is a prison planet, and we do keep getting reincarnated then I would like very much to OPT OUT if possible, once I am gone please don't bring me back.

I am sorry to say, but I have to agree with Agent Smith from the Matrix, we are a plague on the planet, as a species - we suck big time.

Greed, psychopathy, sadistic control.. and it keeps happening.

We seem to be racing extinction, but we are destroying the planet and everything on it - I have stopped researching what we have killed off this last 50 years, it is too depressing.

I know there are good people, but they don't have a say or influence on the bad.. if this is a prison planet, and we do keep getting reincarnated then I would like very much to OPT OUT if possible, once I am gone please don't bring me back.

Soz for being so much of downer on the thread

Fans'

Don't apologize. I feel the same way. I think an ELE is in order to purge the planet of everything rotten. Give it a few thousand years to recover and, MAYBE, let's try again to get it right.

Many, many people do not appreciate what we have. Time to pay the price for hubris.

Indeed Irene, an ELE does look to be the only answer to our species greed, and lack of empathy for other life forms on this mud-ball, I know that there are good folks out there, but they are powerless (by design) to change or make any alterations to the path that "mankind" is racing.

Hopefully once we do get our ELE there will be some mechanism that stops Homo-Sapiens coming back into some kind of dominate life form.

U.S. to Collect Social Media Data of Immigrants, Certain Citizens Fortune Jeff John Roberts

The Department of Homeland Security is proposing to expand the files it collects on immigrants, as well as some citizens, by including more online data—most notably search results and social media information—about each individual.

The plan, which would cover data like Facebook posts or Google results, is set out in the Federal Register, where the government publishes forthcoming regulations. A final version is set to go into effect on Oct. 18.

The plan, reported by BuzzFeed, is notable partly because it permits the government to amass information not only about recent immigrants, but also on green card holders and naturalized Americans as well.

The proposal to collect social media data is set out in a part of the draft regulation that describes expanding the content of so-called “Alien Files,” which serve as detailed profiles of individual immigrants, and are used by everyone from border agents to judges. Here is the relevant portion:

The Department of Homeland Security, therefore, is updating the [file process] to … (5) expand the categories of records to include the following: country of nationality; country of residence; the USCIS Online Account Number; social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results

The proposal follows new rules by the Trump Administration that require visitors from certain countries to disclose their social media handles, and allow border agents to view their list of phone contacts.

Those earlier measures alarmed civil rights advocates who questioned whether they would do much to improve security, and worried other countries would introduce similar screening of Americans. In response to the latest effort to collect social media data, the American Civil Liberties Union warned of a “chilling effect.”

“This Privacy Act notice makes clear that the government intends to retain the social media information of people who have immigrated to this country, singling out a huge group of people to maintain files on what they say. This would undoubtedly have a chilling effect on the free speech that’s expressed every day on social media,” the group said in a statement.

The new rules are currently subject to a comment period until Oct. 18 but, if they go into effect as planned, they will add yet more data to “Alien Files” that can already contain information such as fingerprints, travel histories, and health, and education records.

Such repositories provide powerful intelligence-gathering tools, but brings potential privacy risks such as government surveillance or cyber-attacks.

U.S. Quietly Announces Plan To Monitor Immigrants’ Social Media Accounts, Search HistoriesEven those who are naturalized U.S. citizens.By Willa Frej

The Department of Homeland Security intends to monitor the social media accounts and internet search history of legal immigrants as part of a new tracking system set to roll out next month.

The policy applies to not just immigration applicants, but also to naturalized U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. It goes into effect on Oct. 18, the same day that the latest iteration of President Donald Trump’s travel ban is set begin.

First reported by BuzzFeed, the new rule was quietly published in the Federal Register last week. It’s an update to the Alien File, also known as an A-File, which is the official record-keeping system for an individual going through the immigration system. Until now, A-Files could be kept in either paper or electronic form. Now, the rule says, these records can be kept on paper, electronically or through some paper-electronic combination.

And the information that’s now going to be kept in A-Files includes the country of nationality, country of residence, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service online account number, social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information and search results.

It’s unclear how DHS plans to collect social media handles and search results from people, although the rule does say it plans to “expand data elements used to retrieve records.”

The new rule “makes clear that the government intends to retain the social media information of people who have immigrated to this country, singling out a huge group of people to maintain files on what they say,” Faiz Shakir, American Civil Liberties Union national political director, said in a statement Thursday. “This collect-it-all approach is ineffective to protect national security and is one more example of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.”

It’s not the first time the administration has floated using social media to vet travelers and immigrants. In February, then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, now the White House chief of staff, announced that the agency was considering asking visitors to give officials their social media passwords. In June, the administration quietly put in place a new visa questionnaire requiring all social media handles used in the last five years.

And sure enough, the agency says it’s already been culling social media handles.

“DHS, in its law-enforcement and immigration-process capacity, has and continues to monitor publicly available social media to protect the homeland,” Joanne Talbot, a spokeswoman for the agency, told Bloomberg Wednesday.

Rights groups have expressed concern about the implications the policy could have on free speech.

11/16/2017 02:26 pm ETReport: FCC Plans To Vote To Overturn Net Neutrality Rules In DecemberCritics say the move could harm consumers, small businesses and access to the internet.David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil plans next week for a final vote to reverse a landmark 2015 net neutrality order barring the blocking or slowing of web content, two people briefed on the plans said.

In May, the FCC voted 2-1 to advance Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to withdraw the former Obama administration’s order reclassifying internet service providers as if they were utilities. Pai now plans to hold a final vote on the proposal at the FCC’s Dec. 14 meeting, the people said, and roll out details of the plans next week.

Pai asked in May for public comment on whether the FCC has authority or should keep any regulations limiting internet providers’ ability to block, throttle or offer “fast lanes” to some websites, known as “paid prioritization.” Several industry officials told Reuters they expect Pai to drop those specific legal requirements but retain some transparency requirements under the order.

Critics say the move could harm consumers, small businesses and access to the internet.

In July, a group representing major technology firms including Alphabet Inc and Facebook Inc urged Pai to drop plans to rescind the rules.

Advocacy group Free Press said Wednesday “we’ll learn the gory details in the next few days, but we know that Pai intends to dismantle the basic protections that have fueled the internet’s growth.”

Pai, who argues the Obama order was unnecessary and harms jobs and investment, has not committed to retaining any rules, but said he favors an “open internet.” The proposal to reverse the Obama rules reclassifying internet service has drawn more than 22 million comments.

Pai is mounting an aggressive deregulatory agenda since being named by President Donald Trump to head the FCC.

On Thursday the FCC will vote on Pai’s proposal to eliminate the 42-year-old ban on cross-ownership of a newspaper and TV station in a major market. The proposal would make it easier for media companies to buy additional TV stations in the same market.

Pai is also expected to call for an initial vote in December to rescind rules that say one company may not own stations serving more than 39 percent of U.S. television households, two people briefed on the matter said.